Why is the ruling party targeting HDP?

About two weeks before the local elections of March 28, 2004, the first private Kurdish language school had opened. On the same day, AKP leader Erdoğan was at an election rally on Diyarbakır’s İstasyon Square. I still remember the excitement of the AKP representatives who had arrived at the rally after attending the opening of the private language school. However, Erdoğan focused on usual issues such as health and education without giving clear and new political messages. He did not talk about the Kurdish language school that was opened earlier that day; he did not even mention the word Kurd.

We see that the ruling party has not been able to overcome this paradoxical situation since then. That is, even though the AKP leaders have abandoned the former government policy, which can be summarized as “denial-rejection-assimilation”, and taken considerable steps in the resolution process, Kurdish identity construction, which is the natural outcome of this process, makes them uneasy and they are trying to obstruct it despite knowing very well that it is not possible to do so.

Owing to IS(IS)

From here we can move on to the ruling party’s recent targeting of HDP. Needless to say, contrary to expectations and predictions, HDP has come into prominence as one of the main actors in the Kurdish identity construction in today’s Turkey. It was thought that, like its predecessors, HDP would get caught in between İmralı and Qandil and become everyone’s scapegoat. Moreover, it was predicted that the fact that HDP has provided ample room for socialist and left wing parties, groups and people, this would become a burden for the party and would create problems in its relationship with its Kurdish base. However these predictions did not come true because:
· Even though HPD has not completely freed itself from the encumbrance of İmralı and Qandil, and it might even be said that they are not making any effort about it, the fact that both the party in power and the opposition parties are going through crises of their own in addition to the crisis that the Gülen movement has been going through has significantly cleared the way for HDP.
· HDP has gained a certain dynamic quality with the election of Selahattin Demirtaş to the co-president position, which peaked during the campaign of Demirtaş for presidential elections.
· Despite these the resolution process has been going on and the refusal of the government to the establishment of direct communication channels between İmralı and Qandil has contributed to the increased importance of HDP for the resolution process.
· Most important of all, direct targeting of the Kurds by IS(IS) in Iraq and Syria has eliminated the disagreements and competition among Kurds of the region, and this has accelerated Kurdish identity construction even more.

An extraordinary situation

Let me try to sum it up: With the phenomenon of IS(IS), a “Kurdistan question” rather than a “Kurdish” question has gained prominence. As a consequence of this, we can say that an extraordinary situation has emerged that is beyond not only HDP but also the whole Kurdish Political Movement (KPM) including İmralı and Qandil. For now, the KPM is taking advantage of this new situation by becoming stronger and stronger. However, if they do not have a clear understanding of what the resolution process is evolving into and make the necessary interventions, things could turn upside down and they might lose power.

As for the government, even though some of their principle consultants claim that “regardless of how many mistakes they make, AKP is the one that always wins in the end”, it is not always so. Not understanding, or to be more accurate, not wanting to understand the identity construction among Kurdish people, and seeing it as a threat to itself, AKP is attempting to take action by targeting HDP which they see as the weakest link in the KPM. That this is not a reasonable policy became clear with the recent assault that HDP administrator Ahmet Karataş was the target of.

In a period when there are increasing rumors of Washington DC preparing to collaborate with Tehran against IS(IS), Ankara has to first minimize problems with its own Kurdish constituents and then device a region-wide Kurdish policy.